


returning maiden

by AlexSeanchai



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Double Drabble, Established Relationship, F/M, Past Character Death, Polytheism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexSeanchai/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: Some nights Sokka leaves her: goes outside, watches the sky, listens to the moonlight.





	returning maiden

**Author's Note:**

> So soaring the returning maiden.  
> Alone leading along the western road.  
>    Meeting heaven's dark void;  
> Do not fear, do not tremble,  
>    Later there will be great prosperity.
> 
> —Hexagram 54 of the I Ching, according to the _Guicang_

Some nights Sokka leaves her: goes outside, watches the sky, listens to the moonlight. Sometimes he falls asleep out there; not often.

Suki remains in her lonely bed. She can rarely sleep, these nights. She sleeps poorly as a rule, but with Sokka beside her, the knife-edged thought of _not safe, never safe_ moves three paces farther away: Sokka guards her back, always, and when he is snoring beside her, she can sleep more deeply. So, she thinks, can he: they never pitched their bedrolls side by side before the war ended. They almost never even slept close enough together to serve their breakfast with the same spoon.

She has heard Yue's story, of course. Repeatedly. She knows few braver people. Very few who saved more lives. Of course Sokka loves her.

That Suki will always be second in his heart to a dead woman she has never met—

In the morning Sokka returns. He kisses Suki, cracks a joke, and asks after breakfast; she always has it ready, these mornings, though it is his task more than half the others. While he eats, Suki goes to the household shrine alone and lights incense to the Ocean and the Moon.


End file.
